The American Revolution Center has sponsored a survey that reveals enormous gaps in the knowledge Americans have in civics and Revolutionary-era history. The study consisted of 1001 American adults who were given a multiple choice exam on U.S history. Prior to the exam, 89 percent of the respondents expressed confidence that they would pass. However, only 6 percent went on to pass the test.
What were some of the questions that most respondents failed to answer correctly?
More Americans could identify Michael Jackson as the composer of "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" than could identify the Bill of Rights as a body of amendments in the Constitution.
More than a third did not know which century the American Revolution took place. In fact, half of the participants in the study believed that either the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation or the War of 1812 occurred before the American Revolution. In reality, the American Revolution took place in the last half of the 18th century.
A third of the respondents believed that the Bill of Rights does not guarantee a right to a trial by jury. On the other hand, 40 percent thought that it did secure the right to vote. The respondents must have forgotten about the fact that most women in the U.S. did not have the right to vote until the 19th amendment was ratified under Woodrow Wilson in 1920, which was 129 years AFTER the Bill of Rights came into effect.
More than 50 percent of participants in the study believed that the U.S. system of government is a direct democracy rather than a republic.
As if the findings of this study weren't depressing enough, another survey released by findlaw.com asked 1000 respondents to name the current justices on the Supreme Court. The study found that two-thirds can't name a single current justice. That's right...not one. Only one percent of the respondents were able to name all nine justices.
These studies already prove that most Americans know very little about the identity of the U.S. While one would think that they don't care about U.S. history, 90 percent of Americans think that knowledge of the American Revolution and its principles is very important.
It is important.
Our citizens need to know our country's identity. If future generations are unaware of the blood and sweat it took to make America the country that it is today, why would they feel the need to defend or preserve it? How can one be proud of his or her country without knowing its struggle?
It's funny how we make immigrants take exams on U.S. history to gain citizenship when our own system of education is lacking in that very subject.
Comments
You do learn these things in school; you just forget them ... sort of like math and physics. Seriously, I can barely add fractions anymore.
The only reason I know the answers to most of the above questions is because I teach early American literature. I can name some of the justices b/c I'm a TYT member; otherwise, I would probably only know Alito and of course Sotomayor.
Of course most Americans can identify MJ songs because that is pop culture. That is the definition of pop culture.
I just am really bothered by the last sentence of this article, the one that criticizes education. Education is NOT lacking. We the educators of America are some of the hardest working (and least compensated) individuals in this country. Criticize the news organizations, criticize the laziness of the citizens themselves, but don't criticize education! You (generic "you," not "you" the writer) wouldn't know ANY of the above answers if it weren't for us.
When my wife studied for her citizenship test, I remember looking at the book and wondering if the average American could pass the same exam. She just started doing her undergraduate a few years back, never had a US gov't or US civics course, and she still answer a majority of the questions just from her secondary level education in a third world country in a different hemisphere. But in our defense, I guess we can name the top ten YouTube cat videos. What the establishment hail as the greatest system on earth obviously have one of the poorest education systems. Add this to the already tabloid focused public affairs journalism system, it is no wonder we can't answer any of these questions. This is truly sad---thanks for sharing!!
As a Brit who was never taught much beyond the basics of this period I had a go at the survey and scored 63%. The ones I failed on were pretty much the ones related to battles (e.g. westernmost military action) and people (e.g. the first Secretary of the Treasury) and I have no idea who "Jon and Kate" are.
I'm stunned that americans scored an average of 44% on these.
I failed to name all 9 justices...=(
I could only name 6 and the lady with the glasses >.<
I took the took quiz and only got 13 out of 20.
Okay, to be fair I did read the article first, and I did do American History this year at university. But I think that 80% is not a bad score at all.
Not sure about naming the justices on the Supreme Court though, other than Sotomayor.
To be fair, there are a couple questions on that survey that are a bit irrelevant or obscure.
I scored 14/20. I'd say the majority of the military questions are not that important for people to know.
I scored 65% and i am proud of it:)
The group who put this "test" together is a right wing group. The questions are from the new Texas curriculum. Don't fall for their propaganda.
17 out of 20 for me. I'm happy.
This is only judging by the people who visited the site to take the test, or visited a center in their local area, and my parents weren't aware of this. People you can't rely solely on a small group of adults who don't know their history, for all we know those adults could be bums.
What do you know about Internet voting in the US? Do a search in FB about it!
I'm not surprised. I heard of a study quite some years ago about at least the origins of american history, going as far back as events to mayflower and the pilgrims landing on plymouth rock and and not many people knew about this.
19 out of 20
Many of the questions on that survey were super obscure! Learning about that era has been a life-long interest of mine (scored 80% :), and I have no memory of a Haym Salomon. However, I do heartily agree that it's sad how many people don't know the basics.
Information that someone is FORCED to learn doesn't often stick in long term memory. Meaningful learning only occurs when the learner is interested and involved in the topic. Since our public school system is completely autocratic (top-down, power-over, students have virtually no say), when learning about our democratic republic it's nothing more than an abstract idea with which students have little first hand experience. So it's irrelevant to their every day lives, and thus essentially uninteresting to many. Citizens who graduate from our school system have nearly a complete lack of *experiential* understanding of how a democracy functions -- this disturbs me FAR more than people not being able to remember some arcane details.
16 out of 22 on that first one. Quite a few obscure questions in that one, but I still passsed.
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